


That for Destruction Ice

by Darkmagyk



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rhaegar Won, Family, Gen, Lyanna Stark Lives, Mother-Son Relationship, Rhaegar Lives, The North Remembers (ASoIaF), anti-Rhaegar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 03:46:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14323869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/pseuds/Darkmagyk
Summary: The Lady of Winterfell is unmarried but not a maid. She stalks around the keep and the grounds with the same grey eyes as Lord Rickard before her.She sits in the great hall and hears petitions with the same steely look on her face that Lord Brandon had done when his father was away.She trains in the yard now. To be a woman of war. The turn of her lip just as Lord Eddard’s had once been, determined and dutiful.And in all these things, a boy trails after her, learning, watching with the same grey eyes.





	That for Destruction Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
> 
> This is not Rhaegar friendly, if you think Rhaegar/Lyanna is the great love story of our time, this probably isn't for you.

The Lady of Winterfell is unmarried but not a maid. She stalks around the keep and the grounds with the same grey eyes as Lord Rickard before her. 

She sits in the great hall and hears petitions with the same steely look on her face that Lord Brandon once donned when his father was away. 

She trains in the yard now. To be a woman of war. The turn of her lip just as Lord Eddard’s had once been, determined and dutiful. 

And in all these things, a boy trails after her, learning, watching with the same grey eyes. 

“You’re brother may take the black, and you will be the Lady of Winterfell,” The King had said, as thought it was a mercy. As though she wanted an ancient castle and all those distrustful eyes over her brothers and her father. As though she wanted a mere keep, over home. 

(Rhaegar Targaryen, she learned much much to late, does not understand home, and he does not understand family. Home is a madhouse of intrigue and factions. Family is what stood in the way of you and your throne. No brothers to sword fight in the godswood. No brothers to tell you stories of the little Arryn king who lost the Vale. No brothers to race with you through the wolf’s wood. Just mad fathers and raped mothers, and babies whose wet nurses are tortured to death.) 

“You need not marry,” He says, as though its another mercy. She hadn’t wanted to marry (dead) Robert Baratheon. But now she _can’t_ marry. Perhaps in the south, a King’s cast off with a great keep might still make an almost decent match. But no one in the North wants a southern king’s whore who lost them their rightful lord three times over. At least no one who doesn’t seek to get Winterfell as the bride price. Lord Bolton’s eyes leer, but she will not let the Red Kings win after all these years.

“I’ll legitimize the boy a Stark, so you might have an heir,” He says next. He had wanted a girl. Had proclaimed her Visenya, had promised she’d be a Targaryen princess, raised at court until she could wed her brother. 

He makes no such offer for his second son. Does not exactly make a secret of the boys background, but does not claim him as such. The whole kingdom knows, but her babe’s legitimization papers list him only as Lady Stark’s child. 

It is better that way. 

They don’t quiet flee North, but they leave swiftly and quickly. She does not truly breath until they cross into the Neck, and Howland meets her and her babe with his men, staying with them all the way to Moat Cailin.

And behind the great walls of Winterfell, among the hot springs and the godswood and the crypts where her father and brothers lay, Lyanna Stark teaches her son to hate Targaryens. 

She tells him of the treachery of the Targaryens. How they broke faith with House Stark, how they murdered his grandfather, his uncles. How they let Jaime Lannister remain kingsguard after he broke the most sacred oath, but sent Uncle Benjen to take the black. She tells him of promises and prophecies that a madman born of incest once told her. 

She teaches him of the south. She teaches him of false religions brought by old invaders. She teaches him the lies of chivalry and knighthood they use to hide men’s dishonor. She teaches him of the wasteful pageantry, to the deprivation of duty. 

Lady Stark tells him all of this, and she tells her people all of this. Brings Howland into her solar, lets him tell her of the faithfulness of the people of the Neck and swears her justice in return. Tells GreatJon Umber when he comes to share her of the whispers heard from beyond the Wall. Speaks it to Lord Manderly when he comes to spread stories of the south. 

She visits the Wall and takes her son with her. She shows him what they have become, and she reminds Jeor Mormont that the Iron Throne has abandoned the Black Brothers, but that House Stark never will. The First Ranger guides them to the top. Seven hundred feet tall and the end of the world. And as she looks over the Lands Beyond with her last brother and the son that shares the face of her dear Ned and Brandon, she swears her vengeance so that only they may hear. So that the Wall may stand witness. 

She does not let those in the North doubt where her loyalties lie. Even as in the South they speak of the love sick whore of Winterfell. 

She cannot lift Ice. But she has Mikken forge her a new sword, and she wears it at her side, and spins it in the yard with Sir Rodrik like she wasn’t allowed as a girl. 

And she draws it out when she does justice. Rhaegar Targaryen hides behind a headsmen, but Lady Stark does not. And she reminds her son after every execution that they are the blood of the first men. That this is the Northern Way, their way. That the man who passes the sentence must swing the sword, or risk forgetting his duty of mercy as well as justice. 

And her son soaks it all in. He takes the North into his very bones. Builds snowballs and castles with the other children. Slides across the frozen over ponds after doting staff. 

The bastards of the North are Snows. Lady Stark’s boy was made a Stark before his mother removed him from her breast. But she knows he’s got the snow in his veins as much as the wolf’s blood. She learns, as he grows, that this is a good thing. 

When he is ten, the King writes to him, and encourages the Prince of Dragonstone to do the same. In words parroted from father to son, they both speak of how happy they are to know such a loyal vassal awaits them in the North. 

He does not need his mother to tell him to reply with banal statements and vague promises. But Lady Stark smiles as she reads over his words anyway, and does not bother to suppress a grin when she gets to the signature of Jon Stark. 

He’d have made it as a Snow. It is as old a name as Stark, and great men have worn it. But with Stark he will rule, and now one will question it. 

And with Jon, the King lacks that even basic tie of an old Valyrian name. She’d argued against one, quiet but firm. For his wasn’t to be a Targaryen, wasn’t to be even properly acknowledged as a royal bastard. But he forbid the use of Rickard or Eddard or the oldest of all Stark names. One more dig at the Starks, one more chink in the North. 

Still, her son grows into Jon nicely. 

They continue to exchange letters. 

Jon speaks of his jousting prowess, but declines offers to join his false family at a tourney in the south. He simply must go to Bear Island to Widows Watch to the Dreadfort. 

He sometimes puts on funny voices and recounts the Prince of Dragonstone’s flowery language about court to his friends. 

The Cerwyn boys and Mormont girls both laugh at it, and spend the next hour calling each other Ser in the most disrespectful southern accents they can imagine. 

They all just gag when the news comes, privately to Jon, as though he is a friend, and then officially to Lady Stark, as Lord Paramount and Warden of the North, that the prince is the marry his princess sisters. Both at once, even, as though the little Aegon really were the conqueror come again. 

Lord Manderly says the Faith is up in arms. Howland says whispers from below the Neck are not pleased. 

But Lady Stark sends a hearty message of congratulations. And her son wishes the (his half-)siblings as much happiness as their parents have found. 

They send a elaborately carved trunk as a wedding gift. One decorated with weirwood trees with laughing faces. They decline their invitation because of a fever that does not exist in Wintertown.

And together they wonder what kind of abominations these new Targaryens will create. And Lady Stark reminds her son that Prince Aegon is scarcely a year older than him, that Princess Rhaenys is not yet even six and ten, and that she is nearly certain that Princess Visneya has not flowered. 

(She tells him Rhaegar has no regard for a woman’s health, and that that might end the Targaryens as surely as it nearly ended the Starks. For what would have become of him and their family if she had died in the birthing bed, not yet six and ten either. Lord Cerwyn wonders if perhaps Rhaegar’s legitimized bastard might make a claim in that case, with his mother’s armies. He gives a nudge and a wink, so more than a little is implied. Her twelve year old lordling give a dismissive snort.) 

But after the wedding, the letters change. Lady Stark’s missives from the capital remain more or less unchanging, but Rhaegar’s letters to Jon suddenly seem as though they are written by Old Nan (if Old Nan could read and write.)

Jon has long been dismissive of everything Rhaegar has to say to him. Has disregarded most of the gifts he’s been sent. Has never touched the harp. But suddenly he finds it in himself to read the books. Not merely the ones set out by his mother and the maester as part of his preparation as the future Lord of Winterfell. 

Lyanna does not know what to do with this for the two months it takes for him to come to her with Rhaegar’s entire stories. 

She has known since before he went to kill her brothers that Rhaegar wished for three children. An Aegon and Rhaenys and a Visenya, who would save the world and fulfill a prophecy. 

Rhaegar hopes to use Jon to bridge the gap between his southern Three Heads of the Dragon and the Northern Enemy. He tells him that his role is vital. That they will need him when the enemy arrives and that they the prophecy must speak true, and so they will prevail. 

_He tore the realm, his realm, apart for the sake of a prophecy he could have fulfilled without the risk or death._ She fumes, but does not share that with her son. He is the result of that torn apart realm. And she will think to her dying day that his was worth it. But he’s a kind soul, at his core, and he would rather not know such things.

“What do you think, Jon,” She asks, after he has sat nearly silent staring at the letters for something like two hours. They’ve already had Nan in with the stories of the Others, of the Night’s King, of the Last Hero, just for a refresher. 

“I think,” He says slowly, and his eyes shine with a purpose she’s never seen on him. Her heart turns to ice in an instant, perhaps this is the wish and acknowledgement form his father he has always sought, and perhaps this will turn him to that path. “That the Wall to keep the Other’s out was raised by Bran the Builder. I think that King Rhaegar destabilized the North in his last failed attempt at prophecy. I think the Last Hero was the blood of the first men, just as we are. I think that Stark’s have battled the Others since before the Freehold even learned how to tame dragon. I think the Targaryen kings have neglected the Night’s Watch. I think we need to make a trip to the Wall.” 

He makes the arrangements for them, three and ten and so ready to be a man. She blinks at what she sees. He looks almost kingly in his bearings and in his certainly. She worries if it is his father, trying to rear his damned silver head. But no, this boy is of the North. Her son is of house Stark. The Kings of the North’s blood runs through his veins as surely as it runs through hers. 

They set off a day later. 

“We have defended the North since the age of heroes. We will not let some Southerners start doing our duty for us now.” 

It isn’t fifteen minutes later that they find the wolves in the snow. 

Five newborn pups are dead, curled in a little ball, frozen. But the mother lives on, despite the wounded leg, and nestled into her chest, sucking on her teat, sharing her heat, is one small white direwolf puppy. 

Jon does not even need to ask, Lyanna simply hops off her horse, and goes to assist the mother wolf. 

He names his Ghost. For its color, for the fact that it never makes a sound, for the fact that it’s the last of its siblings. It’s as pale as the snow, save for the bright red of the eyes. And he keeps it curled up to his chest as he rides and as he sleeps, except when it sucks at it’s mother.

They leave her in the cart, and Lyanna tends to her with calloused hands. 

She does not name her, but by the time they reach the Wall, the mother direwolf can walk, and takes to following Lady Stark with bared teeth. 

Benjen nearly sobs when he sees them, a mother and son with a mother and son. Determined and fierce as each other. Two sets of direwolves. 

They share the contents of the King’s letters with the Lord Commander and the First Ranger. Lady Stark wonders, given his son’s exile, if Jeor Mormont will be suspicious of the Warden of the North. But instead she finds him angry.

At Rhaegar. 

He has spoken to no one of this. Even to his old Uncle he’s only brought questions of prophecy and dragons.

“He means to guard the realms of men.” Jon bites out, “but he can’t even be bothered to speak to the guards.”

He goes beyond the Wall with his Uncle and his pup. And Lady Stark waits at Castle Black, with a bunch of Northmen and criminals and Lady Maege, down from Bear Island to visit her brother and her Lady. 

She guards her tongue around the old maester. And she smiles out of his sight when she tells him that her son shows nothing of the Targaryens in his face. But he too seems bothered by Rhaegar’s oversight. From what they know, he speaks to his Prince and Princesses, he speaks to his Northern son, and otherwise in the matters that are to come, he keeps his own counsel. 

Last time he made to fulfill a prophecy and guessed wrong, Lyanna lost nearly everything. 

Now all Lady Stark has are her son and the North. And she will not let any southern king take them from her. 

When Jon gets back from beyond, he shows her a hand in a little wooden box, dead, frozen, and moving still. Even Lady Maege who fights the Ironborn and Wildlings alike steps back and keeps her hand clasped on her sword. The men at the Wall mummer and wail. Lady Stark merely meets her sons eye and nods. It appears the ravings of a mad man hold some truth after all. 

Jon tells her of people who speak the common tongue and worship the old gods. “They are more like us then any damn southerners.” He says, as they ride home. Benjen had watched them go from the castle gates. She’d have cried once, at leaving her only brother, but she has been Lady Stark for thirteen years and all her tears froze long ago. 

They return home, and she takes a jewelry smith into the crypts. She points to the crowns of winter on the statue's heads and demands a circlet of bronze, with nine iron spikes and first men ruins. “A necklace” she says, when he stares, when he sees what he is being asked to do. “For now, I need a necklace.” 

When it is done, she leaves her son behind, and sets off through the North, with her guards and her ladies, with her new jewelry, her box, and with a direwolf.

Her bannermen take her in one by one, and gape at the dead hand. They pack it in summer snow, but it rots in its little box. Still, it moves. 

“The king knew this was coming,” She tells them in turn, rests her hand on her neck, sees their eyes widen as they take in her new jewelry. “He has since he was a boy. And instead of working for the good of the kingdom, for the North who has faced this threat, who remembers, he abandons the Watch, and made war on the North.” 

They respond in different ways. But she is not stopped. “The Targaryens have lost their fire.” She tells them, “Rhaegar shames his gods and ours by merely marrying his children twice over. And then calls that protecting the realm. But what do dragon lords know of Winter. ” 

It's easier with some than others. Howland does not even require her speech, and she only gives it several days after the fact, when he’s reaffirmed his loyalty and introduced her to his son. Lady Dustin looks furious that her husband and son are so easily convinced, and even more furious when the hand proves them right. But in the end Lady Stark knows the North Remembers and the Starks are loved. And she has worked so very hard to prove she and her son worthy of that legacy. 

She arrives back Winterfell with men from most everywhere. And Jon’s sharp grin “Winterfell is your’s, My Lady,” Is so like his Uncle’s that her tears might melt again. Jojen and Meera Reed stand with him in the receiving party. Guided by the son’s strange dreams to join the Starks. 

Meera Reed is of an age with Jon. And at four and ten he is just about the right age to start thinking on that kind of thing, that part of his future. Nearly a man grown. Lord Manderly had shown off his Granddaughters to such an end too. Rickard Karstark had made a point to tell her that his Alys was not yet betrothed. 

She is resistant to set such things in stone now, of course. But she might have to soon. One of the things waiting for her upon her return is a letter from Rhaegar, wondering about the matches of the future Lord of Winterfell, and suggesting some fluffy southern brides. 

But it has no demands. And no little lady's father outside of the North has made an inquiry. 

She has more important things to deal with. 

Jon has not been idle while she travels. He heard petitions and ran the castle with the Castellan. But he has also pursued a new path. 

No longer is he content to leave the King and the Prince as his only pen pals in the south. He has written to Waymar Royce, whose ambition is to join the Watch, whose father had only fond memories of Ned Stark growing up in the Vale, whose cousin was killed by Areys with Brandon. He writes to Patrek Mallister, who lost an uncle to the same. He writes to Tyrion Lannister. The Imp might be the only person in all of Westeros who is more bitter than Lady Stark, but he finds the games of the south almost as funny as she does and makes the most wonderful suggestions of who else the future Lord of Winterfell might wish to make friends with. Like the Lord of Horn Hill's bookish heir, and perhaps even the leftover Greyjoy boy, languishing as a hostage in the Riverlands. 

Lady Stark reads the correspondence her son shares with a sharp sort of approval. Her father had had Southern Ambitions, had searched out southern brides and bridegrooms, had sent Ned away. But she has Northern Ambitions, and her son seeks the southern lordlings only for those goals. A slow, steady kind of friendship and support. Men not for rebellion, but for survival. 

So that they might have allies when Rhaegar finally decides to fight. 

It takes another two years before Rhaegar Targaryen brings his family North. He does not bring an army at his back, though the Watch and Wildling Scouts say one is being raised elsewhere. 

It is of little matter. Her armies are well prepared. Her son’s friends too, know what is coming. A new fad for obsidian jewelry in the North allows for Jon to prey on his friendship and for mining on Dragonstone to be relatively unimpaired. 

And when the Targaryens find that fire cannot defeat winter. Well, the Starks will endure. _We always have._

She knows this as the three headed dragon banner comes flying into her courtyard. The wolves on the walls stand impassive and true. The dragons all died. They fell to Targaryen infighting. But as she and her household take a knee to the king, her direwolf stays tall. 

(The Wildlings, on the Gift old and new, answerable to Jeor and her brother, have bad things to say about kneelers. She understands them all in this moment.)

When they rise, before she steps forward to speak, she glances at Jon, and they agree. They shall never kneel to the Targaryens again. 

_My son will be a King of Winter_ , she think’s as she sees him beside his sire for the first time. Stark eyes and Stark face. In Stark colors and with a Stark sigil pinned to his cloak. A giant beast of a wolf by his side, eyes as vibrant as the trees of the Northern Gods. _You have no claim on him, and you have no claim on us_.

“Winter is coming, Your Grace,” Jon says, by way of greeting.

“Well spoken, my boy,” Rhaegar smiles, eager to be familiar after 17 long years, and the Lannister looking Visenya laughs along with her brother/husband and his other wife. “Northerners.” She hears the sisters who do not look like sisters giggle at each other. Daenerys Targaryen does not laugh. She eyes Jon and she eyes Lady Stark, and she eyes the direwolves at their heels. 

“My son is mistaken,” Lady Stark says, as they lead the royal party inside. Arthur Dayne is ever by his King’s side. But he has aged so in the years since he was her jailer. He moves stiffly and slowly. Prince Lewyn Martell only seems to want to shoot glares at Ser Jaime. And Jaime only has eyes on his bastard niece. Jon Connington doesn’t even have a sword. Just a love sick look in his eyes, that Lady Stark had grown out of as her belly had began to swell. They have not brought any other guards with them. She smiles at the Rhaegar and does not look at Lord Umber or Lord Karstark or Lord Manderly or Howland who have all come to see the king. She does not need to. “Winter is already here.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my [tumblr](http://darkmagyk.tumblr.com/).


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